ProfessorPatrice Cani

Patrice D. Cani is full professor of Physiology, Metabolism and Nutrition and leading a research team at the Louvain Drug Research Institute (LDRI) of the University of Louvain (UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium) and Visiting Professor at Imperial College London at the Faculty of Medicine, Department of Metabolism, Digestion and Reproduction (London, UK).

He is honorary research director from the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FRS-FNRS) and WELRI (WELBIO) investigator. After a B.Sc. degree in dietetics he joined the Faculty of Medicine of UCLouvain where he received a M.Sc. in Nutrition, another M.Sc. in Health Sciences, and a PhD in Biomedical Sciences (physiology, metabolism and nutrition).

He is recipient of prestigious grants such as two ERC grants (Starting Grant ENIGMO 2013, PoC ERC grant Microbes4U 2016). He received the prize “Baillet Latour Grant for Medical Research” (2015), the “International Prize of Physiology Lucien Dautrebande” (2016), the "Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research and Creativity" from the joint scientific committee of the Academies of Medicine of Belgium and France, and the Council of the JA DeSève Research Chair of Québec (2019), Prize for Biomedical Research (The AstraZeneca Foundation & KAGB/ARMB) (2022).

He has been elevated at the rank of Officer of the Walloon Merit (O.M.W.) and elected as member of the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium since 2016. He also received the Bauchau Chair at UNamur (2016) and the Francqui Chair at ULiège (2017).

In 2007, he published the discovery of the concept of metabolic endotoxemia, and more recently, he discovered the beneficial role of the bacteria Akkermansia muciniphila on obesity and cardiometabolic risk factors. More recently, he contributed to the identification of a novel bacterium, Dysosmobacter welbionis, impacting on glucose metabolism, inflammation and cancer. His main research interests are the investigation of interactions between gut microbes and host in the context of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiometabolic disorders and cancer.

He is author/co-author of more than 400 scientific research publications, reviews and book chapters and ranked in the top 1% world-class researcher selected for his exceptional research performance and citations in the world (source Clarivate), h-index 124 and cited more than 80 500 times (Scopus, May 2026).

His motto is : “In Gut We Trust”.